Dixie Dailey Whitt

URBANA - Dixie Dailey Whitt died at 12:43 p.m. Saturday (Aug. 19,  2023) at home at ClarkLindsey, overlooking her beloved Meadowbrook Park. She passed only six days before celebrating her 60th wedding anniversary with her husband, Greg.

Her family and friends knew her as a "fighter." She lost her last fight against pain and multiple myeloma, surrounded by her loving husband, Greg, her caregivers and her cat, Crumpet.

Dixie was born in Longmont, Colo., daughter of Herman E. and Helen Stanton Dailey. She attended Lakewood High School and then studied zoology and genetics at Colorado State University. She met Greg over her project in saline selection of drosophila. She was a brilliant student as she got her B.S. and Ph.D. She was the first person in the department to take a biochemistry course. She was the first female to obtain an earned Ph.D. in the sciences in the summer of 1965. She had been awarded both an NSF Fellowship and an NDEA Fellowship to support her research.    

She greatly enjoyed research in biology, with early interests ranging from rat nematodes to later focus on biochemical genetics of bacteria.

After her Ph.D., she went to Yale in 1965 as a postdoctoral trainee in genetics. She joined the University of Illinois Department of Microbiology in 1969 and carried out microbiological research at many levels with different colleagues. She became a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

She started teaching at the University of Illinois Medical School in 1989 and was ranked as excellent by her students numerous times over the years. She was an assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology starting in 2006 and became an assistant professor of clinical microbiology from 2008 until her retirement, when she was awarded emerita status.

She greatly enjoyed teaching as well as service on committees of the American Society of Microbiology, but she was particularly proud of the textbooks she co-authored with Abigail Salyers ("Bacterial Pathogenesis: A Molecular Approach," "Microbiology, Diversity, Disease and the Environment" and "Revenge of the Microbes: How Bacterial Resistance Is Undermining the Antibiotic Miracle").

The hobbies that Dixie enjoyed the most were gourmet cooking with our "traveling gourmet group" and collecting chicken decorations and statues. She also enjoyed keeping unusual pets - rats, an armadillo, a racoon - as well as many cats. She organized house finances and encouraged us to travel to distant places. Her favorite domestic places were Mesa Verde, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Denver, Chicago, Ashville and San Francisco. Her favorite overseas places were Athens, Delphi, Jerusalem, Mexico City, Moscow, Petra and Santorini. Lastly, out of the thousands of Urbana open houses she dragged her husband to, she found four that suited her as she moved around Urbana.

Special thanks to Christie Clinic, Carle, Meadowbrook, Synergy and Transitions Hospice for providing skilled people to help ease her life. Because of their care, her strength was maintained, and she enjoyed her recent wheelchair trips through the ClarkLindsey campus. She enjoyed seeing two deer and feeding the koi.

Dixie had a strong philanthropic perspective. Her three favorites were the Champaign County Humane Society, Exotic Feline Rescue Center and the Urbana Park District. Please send any memorial contributions to these groups in lieu of flowers.

There will be no formal observance of Dixie's passing. Greg would prefer to share thoughts about her individually with those who knew her on a more personal level.